Education isn’t an area where we typically see a lot of Customer Experience activity. But, when you think about it, it absolutely makes sense to capture feedback and use it to drive changes that improves something as critical as education. While this can be handled in a fairly straightforward way for individual schools, it’s quite different for Cognita. The group has 65 schools around the world, with 5,000 staff responsible for teaching over 30,000 students.

That, by any benchmark, is a serious Voice of the Customer undertaking!

In fact, when I say “Voice of the Customer”, what I mean on this occasion is Voice of the Parent. Since 2014, Cognita has run its program, in nine languages, to capture feedback from parents about their child’s education. There are a couple of really important elements here. Firstly, every school is different, with its own ethos and environment, so while the process for capturing, reporting and acting upon feedback needs to be consistent, there must also be a significant degree of flexibility.

Secondly, Cognita set up its program with a clear link to business objectives and with clear success criteria. This is something that our CX consultants always recommend so it’s fantastic to see it happening in this less-than-usual implementation.

The changes that have taken place in various schools as a result of the program range from catering provision to transportation to actual educational practices. In short, every aspect of school life can be impacted by the feedback gathered – and the company’s success also caught the eye of our ACE Awards judges with a Judges’ Choice award win for two years in a row!

If you think you work in an industry where Voice of the Customer is a bit tricky – take a look at this case study. It’s a real lesson in how best practices can be applied in new ways and new places. Cognita is also implementing a Voice of the Employee program for staff and a Voice of the Pupil initiative so there’ll certainly be more to hear from this team!

Next week, we’ll have a new set of our best customer stories to share as we celebrate CX Day. Check back then!

This year, to celebrate CX Day on October 3rd, we’re running a countdown where we share some of our favorite customer stories to help inspire us all in our day-to-day Customer Experience activities. We’ve already talked about some of the brilliant stuff that RS Components and Siemens are doing and I encourage you to take a look at those stories if you missed them before.

This week, we are focusing on a long-standing customer who has, frankly, dominated the Confirmit ACE Awards for years. They’ve been a Judges’ Choice winner (the “best of the best”) for multiple years and the judges have even joked about giving them their own category in order to give other customers a better chance of winning! Philadelphia Insurance have been running their Voice of the Customer program for many years, and what is most impressive is that they continue to see results from their work year after year. The team started their program back in 2011 when it became clear that changes in the marketplace meant that in order to stand out from the crowd, insurers needed to take a new approach. In this case, that approach was a focus on customer service that also added incremental value to the business. While Philadelphia Insurance had measured NPS® for some time, and had captured transactional data from call center activities, there hadn’t been a holistic approach.

Having implemented a much more structured program, Philadelphia set about doing exactly what our CX consultants always rave about – taking action! While this is always the intent of a VoC program, it’s still something that can be hard to achieve. The team at Philadelphia, though, have made changes across the company – from website tweaks that reduced calls into the contact center, to a new billing system that resolved the biggest cause of customer frustration. The result? Return on Investment. All the changes that the company has made have a direct impact on the bottom line, proving that listening to customers is NOT a nice to have. It’s essential, not only to stand out from the crowd, but to long-term financial success.

I really recommend taking a look at the case study. Whether you’re in the insurance business or not, it’s a great story that proves the power of a strong CX program.

Next week, we’ll have another story to share, before we celebrate CX day with something rather special!!

Technology is at the heart of your research operations. It facilitates your staff’s workflows, helps you deliver on the promises you’ve made to clients, and drives management decisions. Subpar system performance and technical limitations can have dire consequences for your business. Download our Challenge the Status Quo: Technology in Market Research infographic to learn more.

Choosing a career in customer experience (CX) is not for those uncomfortable with gray space. You don’t always have the clear, binary results of the “big four” professions—medicine, accounting, law and engineering. You either complete the surgery successfully, balance the books, win the case or build the bridge successfully or not. Results in CX range from the softer type, like building out a CX program to begin with, to evolving into what we all strive for, actually enhancing business outcomes via changed experiences for customer and employees.

In my last post I discussed educational backgrounds for CX careers, which are still not well supported in higher education beyond a handful of masters’ degree certifications and industry/provider certifications in certain methodologies.

One thing I missed, however, is a matter of debate in some circles. In the CXPA Community, a forum for CXPA members, there was a discussion this week about whether CX should be called out as its own discipline. Opinions varied, but it’s clear there is still confusion in the market about what CX is.

Breaking into the field, then, could be approached many different ways, without the direct path of a CX degree. We all know CX professionals who have come from different parts of their organizations with a special focus or approach to CX. For example, in the 80s and 90s when process improvement was king, the smart companies paid attention to the customer’s experience, while squeezing out efficiencies and cost. The balance often tipped more in favor of the company, however, and led to poor experiences. This is my theory as to why CX is now king—customer revolt due to better online experiences. No news there.

Yet process improvement still makes a good background for CX if one doesn’t get too hung up on inwardly-focused initiatives. A great CX isn’t all about fixing potholes, according to Dan Heath in his new book with brother Chip, called The Power of Moments, launching October 3 on CX Day. Fixing key moments and elevating experiences must be balanced.

Some believe that a data or business analytics background is the best entry-level job for CX. While data analytics is absolutely critical to a mature CX program, couldn’t that be true about any field right now? There’s a reason I keep checking with my 20-year old college student about his proclivity for math—“are you SURE you don’t like it?” In 2016 Glassdoor listed Data Scientist as the best overall job—as voted by those who work in it. High pay even at entry levels, open doors wherever you go…but that doesn’t even sound like a CX career, does it?

No, most CX professionals have hacked the jungle with a machete, starting as Market Researchers brandishing SPSS charts, advertising account directors working on corporate brands, sales people who “know the customer” but have never read a research report, process engineers and customer service people with contact center backgrounds.

Any of these professions are a decent place to start (better than the “big four” professions), but knowledge of only one discipline cannot sustain a CX career alone. The truth is most of us find our way to CX through a combination of these disciplines…a little product management here, a little client success directing there, and a dab of change management to round it off. And that’s fine for setting up CX programs, and achieving results if you have a very committed executive leadership team.

But without that benefit, it can be a long slog. So I’d recommend the following to the multi-talented business person who has experience in marketingresearchcommunications changemanagementprocessengineeringproductmanagementbrandmanagementcustomerservicedataanalytics:

Fill in the most important gaps first, or surround yourself with people who can, particularly in change management and experience design.

Don’t settle for merely setting up programs. It’s not enough to keep your executives interested and won’t keep you in your seat past a few years.

Yes, find an analytics person who sees more than numbers but can tellstories based upon the customer insights you gather—your job will be that much easier.

More education is great too, but forget the MBA—shocking, I know—and look into organizational leadership and development degrees or any degree that will provide more of the softer skills (combined with some key hard skills regarding data and business models) that you’ll need to impact an organization beyond the data. A career in CX is wild, wonderful and experiences that require YOU to have a broad background.

So many organizations are trying to transform themselves and many look to technology as some kind of silver bullet. Technology can help, but when change isn’t fully realized, and the world’s problems are not magically swept aside, where is the blame placed? On the technology? Or the people using it?

In this webinar, Phil Durand from Confirmit and Bruce Temkin, CCXP Managing Partner & Customer Experience Transformist, investigated ways in which CX professionals can become a driving force to break down silos and bring the company together. From building cross-functional teams to support the customer in a more end-to-end manner, to using technology to put insight in the hands of the right people, they identified the best ways to deliver a customer experience that crosses the silos and achieves business results.

Our countdown to CX Day 2017 continues. Last week, we shared a case study about one of our most successful clients, RS Components who are doing some seriously impressive things with a large, multi-lingual, multi-country CX program. If you missed the blog post, it’s definitely worth checking it out – I think you’ll learn something new.

This year, CX Day has a theme around #IHeartCustomers which I think is something that all CX professionals can relate to. I know that for many frontline employees, it can be hard to “heart” all customers, all the time, but for the rapidly expanding world of CX pros, I think there is a real sense that all customers can teach us something.

Which brings me neatly onto our featured customer case study for this week. Siemens Corporation has been working with Confirmit for several years, and their program is delivering some significant results. From a metrics perspective, their NPS® has increased from the low 30s to over 50 since implementation and response rates range between 15 and 30%, something that few surveys (even great ones) achieve in the long term.

Of course, it’s not all about metrics, it’s about action and innovation and here Siemens does really well. They’re a repeat winner of the Confirmit ACE Awards, and this year they won in the Voice of the Employee category following the expansion of their program to look at employee feedback.

Another area where Siemens is focused on innovation is text analytics. The team there has implemented Confirmit Genius to gain a whole new level of insight into what is being said across different categories of the business. With text analytics and real-time alerts, their teams always have up-to-date information most pertinent to them at the right time. This drives action and keeps Voice of the Customer top-of-mind for Siemens’ teams. Take a look at the case study to find out more.

If that inspires you (and how can it not?), you might like to learn more about how text analytics can add a new dimension to your Customer Experience activities, particularly if you combine content from social media as well, because, let’s face it, some people will always prefer to Tweet rather than respond to your surveys!

The deepest insights often lie hidden in unstructured, freeform content stored within open-ended survey responses, internal business systems, and scattered across the Internet. You can watch the on-demand version of our Summer of Analytics webinar “Unlocking Insights with Text Analytics” to learn how this approach can help your business understand the Customer Experience better than ever before.

More next week – stay tuned and remember to let us know how you will be celebrating CX Day on October 3rd!

As a Customer Experience professional, do you find yourself struggling to show real results and tangible business outcomes? After roughly twenty years as a discrete discipline, Customer Experience (CX) is still a difficult career in which to demonstrate business value. Many in the field are absolutely committed to the profession and to the mission of improving customer and employee experience. But from a career perspective, where has it gotten them?

I’ll explore this question in a series of blog posts as this is a subject close to my heart. As a marketer/product manager turned CX professional 12 years ago, I’ve slogged through the trenches and looked in from the outside as well. It is important to examine this issue openly, as CX programs continue to “run out of runway” in making a difference in their organizations, and thus in CX professionals’ success.

Preparation for a Career in CX

First, how does one prepare to be successful in CX? Are there educational programs and degrees for CX? Are there entry level positions or do you grow into CX roles?

I researched this in my Master’s thesis a few years ago: there were no undergraduate degrees in customer experience at that time (2012), and a quick search shows me that not much has changed in 2017. Drexel, Pace and University of Wisconsin and numerous other brick-and-mortar and online schools offer bachelor’s degrees in customer service management, a component of CX but certainly very different from the field overall. DePaul, Rutgers and several others offer customer service management certificates.

General CX certifications in have been around for several years, usually offered by CX industry providers and most notably the Customer Experience Professionals Association which now boasts hundreds of Certified Customer Experience Professionals.

Stanford offers a course through their corporate innovation certification program on CX design and design thinking, another worthy avenue to CX, but not the whole discipline. Rutgers offers a CX Certificate program through its Center for Innovation Education, featuring CX luminaries including Lior Arussy, Jeanne Bliss, Carol Buehrens (faculty chair) and many other authors, practitioners and providers (cx.rutgers.edu). Arizona State University has a similar program.

Many MBA programs offer CX classes and concentrations now—that list has grown significantly in recent years. IE School of Human Sciences & Technology in Madrid offers a Masters in Customer Experience and Innovation.

But try a Google search for customer experience degrees, and you will need to dig to find what I did, demonstrating that the field has not yet matured to the point—or made enough impact upon business outcomes—to lead to higher education investments in CX curriculum.

For students considering careers in CX, the options are still limited for the most part to adjacent degrees such as Marketing, Research and Analysis, Design, Process Improvement, Customer Service or Business. Many CX professionals have grown into CX from those fields, and the combination of working in those areas is what makes for the strongest CX practitioners. Certification programs can provide a great base of knowledge for business professionals who want to switch to or sharpen their CX skills. More on that in my next post. But until then, I’d love to hear from others who may know of undergrad and graduate degrees in CX specifically, as my search was not exhaustive. If the answers are few, we’ve got some work to do in the industry!

It’s less than a month until the fifth annual CX Day, organized by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). Once again, Confirmit is delighted to be a sponsor of what has become a real highlight of the Customer Experience calendar. As the CX industry grows and more people become true professionals in what has been, until recently, a fairly niche area of expertise, CX Day has become a wonderful rallying point.

One of the great things about working at Confirmit is that we’re involved with so many elements of the CX world. Of course we have great technology that allows businesses to capture the Voice of the Customer and the Voice of the Employee, and to use that insight to improve the Customer Experience. But we also have our (ever-expanding!) team of CX consultants who work with clients to help them build programs that will deliver that insight. Finally, of course, we work with the CX teams within our client organizations – the people on the frontline, who are the real stars of CX Day.

For CX Day this year, we’re celebrating some of our clients who we think are really blazing a trail in their efforts to put customers front and center in their companies. Each week we’ll share a case study that we think will inspire you.

This week, we’re kicking off with RS Components, a long-standing and incredibly successful client who our CX consultants have worked closely with for several years. I’m not even going to try to explain their program in a short blog post, but if I say that their program covers 29 markets, 17 languages, any one of 9 individual activities, and any combination of 7 channels, you’ll get a sense of the scale of the work they are doing!

You can read the full case study here or, if you’d like a more in-depth analysis if their program, industry analyst firm Ovum recently wrote a full report on it which you can take a look at here.

If you’d rather just get the highlights (and some top tips for getting up and running with such an ambitious Voice of the Customer initiative) you can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth and watch our short video interview with Paula McKillen, Head of CX Development at RS Components. I think most CX professionals will agree with her assertion that “it’s all about cultural change and development”.

Spare a thought for research buyers. They’re having a tough time these days. As technology evolves and demands change, they are now facing:

Cheaper global competition

Innovative new offerings

Nontraditional/indirect competitors taking market share

Demanding consumers

These business challenges mean that there is increasing pressure on researchers and your projects are becoming increasingly complex. I’d bet some of these will ring a bell:

Multi-national - Multi-lingual projects

More channels, more sources

Deeper analysis to find deeper insights

New methodologies, new technologies

More contextual information surrounding the core area of research

And your research buyers don’t just want data. They want highly visual insights in real time.

This burden on researcher firms doesn’t end there. While research buyers are demanding more, their budgets are shrinking and they want insights faster. Respondents, suffering from survey fatigue, are becoming less engaged. And through it all, you are also facing increasing competition from every angle.

Each one of these things is a huge challenge. But really, all these challenges are simply symptoms of another problem.

For many research firms, processes and technology silos are THE underlying problem! Chances are, like most research businesses, you are using multiple technology solutions for the different means of data collection, analysis, and reporting. These siloed technologies create more work, making each activity in the research process take longer.

Think about it… Panel, mobile, data collection, reporting – all in separate systems. This results in a redundant, and time-consuming process of repeatedly cleaning up data, analyzing again and again, and manually reporting.

What’s more, time and again, I’ve heard from researchers that with business systems spread across so many different platforms, they find it absolutely impossible to rapidly adapt to their clients’ bigger needs. Unfortunately, many researchers end up finding this out the hard way, when they are forced to choose between doing more manual work or turning down the project when their technology cannot accommodate the clients’ needs. Meanwhile, your clients grow more and more frustrated.

Let’s face it, process and technology silos in research are a major problem. To advance in this competitive market, research firms need to eliminate those silos and find a flexible, end-to-end solution that can scale as rapidly as your clients’ needs evolve.

Recently I was speaking with one of our clients in the pharmaceutical industry about her company’s call center and some of the challenges she has collecting data from that function. She told me that her company has many different levels within the call center, and each level handles different types of calls. One of the most common type of calls into the pharma call center come from the end patient. Call center teams are primarily answering questions that the end patient forgot to ask their physician, or occurred to them after researching a product online. The agents are also are taking calls related to pricing promotions and coupons, as well as calls from physicians’ offices.

Together we brainstormed a few ways that her call center can collect useful data to create a positive impact on customer experience, messaging, positioning and product awareness, and adoption.

Patient Call – Product Information: Clarity of messaging regarding a product’s purpose, benefits, risks and its advertising perception can all be gathered and used to validate the current product positioning. Once you have the data, Marketing and Branding have clear insight to consider and can look at ways to make adjustments.

Patient Call – Price Promotions and Coupons: This is a great opportunity to learn about how a price promotion and/or product was perceived by the patient. You can also learn more about the patient’s circumstances and what assistance would be of most value to them. This information can be used to update price promotions or change the offering. It may also be useful when determining new segments to target in your promotional programs.

Physician Office – Product Questions: These calls are typically handled by the most skilled agents who have medical background. Capturing these product questions can help you identify trends enabling you to clarify messaging. You can also ask the agents to gather information about the physician’s office, patient population, or product concerns to help identify unmet needs that you can then work into your product and marketing strategy.

Along with satisfying a specific inquiry, collecting and leveraging feedback from your call center interactions is a great way to improve your overall patient experience, drive a clearer message and improve product adoption. Have a brain storming session with your call center director to bring these ideas to the table. In most cases, I bet they will partner with you to help make their department more visible and impactful within the organization, and your department will benefit as well!

Confirmit Horizons Version 22 is the current release of our award-winning software for Voice of the Customer, Voice of the Employee and Market Research programs. It provides you with richer insights, so you can make smarter decisions and react faster to business needs. You can listen to what customers are saying across a range of different channels, analyze that information and assign actions appropriately to manage business change. Download the fact sheet to learn about the innovations delivered in this version.

Confirmit provides businesses and researchers a powerful, end-to-end solution supporting the entire survey project lifecycle, from panel management and sampling to reporting and data visualization and all the analysis in between. It caters to all data collection methods, including web, mobile, face-to-face interviewing (CAPI), phone (CATI), social media, and integrates with external business systems enabling you to take advantage of the most complete, feature-rich, and robust set of tools available – all in one place! In this eBook we’ll give you a taste of Confirmit Horizons survey capabilities, from design to delivery.

We talk about a lot of things in the crazy, mixed up world of Customer Experience. Satisfaction. Recommendation. Easiness. We also talk about trust, but I don’t see it as a metric as often as the others. When dealing with someone, we know if we trust them but it’s hard to quantify. It probably works best as a relative measure, if that one organization is perceived to be more or less trustworthy than another. Either way, knowing you might have a trust issue in the market place should be of great value. Wouldn’t you think?

But, how do you design a customer experience that creates trust? Maintains what you’ve already got? Or builds more of it?

A couple of ideas spring to mind, none of which are overtly clever or technical but each of which seem harder to achieve than I’m sure many businesses and customers would like. Keep your promises, do the right thing, don’t take customers for granted. Simple stuff.

In contrast, I can tell you how you don’t build trust. In fact, I can tell you how to actively erode trust until you get to the point where customers are walking out the door as fast as they can.

You open an automotive dealership.

That’s not fair.

Let me be more specific. I’m sure many of you are like me – you know how to drive a car, but not how to fix it. Which puts you in an awkward position of needing to trust someone else when something happens to your car. Luckily, you have a choice. You can either go to the garage with the big, shiny logo outside and put your trust in the brand, but pay more for this warm feeling of security – or you can seek out an independent who may or may not know or care what they’re doing, but who will undoubtedly charge you less. Tricky.

Now, without wanting to give too much away (mainly for legal reasons, if I’m completely honest), I recently had to return my aging vehicle to the big, shiny logo branded dealership as a result of a recall for a minor issue. While there, the dealership’s diligent staff – without asking – did a free check over the rest of my car. To be clear, not just the bit that prompted the recall – everything. This was in order to assess if anything else needed attention due to safety. So the recall item was all sorted under warranty, but who’d have guessed it? Bless their little hearts, those darling workshop munchkins found problems elsewhere.

You’ve guessed from my tone that trust, in a positive sense, was not featuring highly in this encounter. You see, I’d been to this garage for a warranty repair before. On that instance, they fixed the issue but somehow the car left the workshop with a warning light on. “Oh dear, sir. It looks like we’ll need to fix that for you. That’ll be eight million pounds please.” Coincidence?

So I had been burnt before – or so I perceived. My mind exploded in conspiracy theories as this new bill for what should have been a free morning was presented to me. The dealership and the manufacturer obviously don’t like doing warranty work, as they lose money, I presume. So if they can charge for something else while I’m there? Dubious. Except I’d now cottoned on to their villainous game – and I was having none of it. They had cried wolf before and I now thought they were at it again.

“Please put the car on the ramp and show me the issue that needs fixing,” I said.

And with the technician waving a tiny mirror around near the rear springs, I tried to see the damage he was talking about. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t see what they meant. It was unconvincing.

And as I struggled to kept these thoughts to myself, it struck me how the big, shiny logo and the all that money invested in branding had been whittled away to nothing by something as simple as perception and people’s behavior. I didn’t trust them anymore. The manufacturer might make lovely cars, but if I can’t trust the people in the dealership who sell and maintain them, then I may as well get on the bus.

I’m not sure what nugget to take from this, except to say I believe trust is a vitally important yet immensely fragile part of the customer experience. And I know it goes both ways. Undoubtedly, we should include this in our measurements more often, but I’m more perplexed by what actions we should be taking to ensure trust is nurtured between organizations and customers alike.

Post-script: I took the car to my trusted independent workshop and they confirmed that, yes, the springs were damaged, it was dangerous and they should be replaced right away. Turns out big shiny logo wasn’t lying after all. But they haven’t got my money.

Voice of the Customer dashboards are an excellent tool for sharing customer feedback and driving organizational improvements. Effectively designed dashboards help everyone in your organization understand and navigate CX data. Unfortunately, it can be challenging to decide what to include, what not to include, and how to organize it all effectively.

In this webinar, Phil Durand, Confirmit’s Director of Customer Experience Management, shared best practices in dashboard design and showed you tangible examples of highly effective dashboards.

No one likes a tattle tale. But there are times when you see something so unsettling that you just have to speak up. So, here I am - tattling. Now, I won’t be so awful as to call out company or individual names. What I want to talk about today has been happening so often, that I think it’s becoming a trend – one you executives need to know about and address ASAP.

As an executive, you depend on your staff to make the right decisions for the business. But how do you know they are making the right decisions for the business as opposed to making decisions that are easy? Allow me to explain.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve seen a worrying trend talking to people at tradeshows and events. As our teams have introduced new innovations and opportunities to attendees, some people refused to listen. Now, before you go congratulating your staff on resisting salespeople’s attempts – you should know the reasons they are refusing. In my opinion, it’s quite disturbing.

Ultimately, the reason is they are too comfortable with the status quo – no matter what it means to your business. Specifically, we’ve heard lines like “I’m retiring in 2 years. I just don’t want to deal with this.” and “No one is complaining. I’m not going to be the one to wake the sleeping dragon.”

Yes, Mr/Mrs. Executive of a very big firm that shall remain nameless, a member of your staff said that. Your staff member is comfortable simply maintaining the status quo. Your staff member is disengaged – just coasting along, and isn’t truly thinking about what’s good for your business.

To succeed in a highly competitive market, you need your staff to be invested in the customer experience, to be “always on”, and to be thinking about what’s best for the business. But unfortunately, some seem to be sleeping on the job. Staff simply maintaining the status quo is not ok. And it’s not what your customers expect from you.

What can you do about it? Well, a critical element is to strive to create an environment that encourages and rewards employees at all levels to take the initiative and make recommendations. No, reinventing your corporate culture isn’t something that is just going to happen overnight. But, you can start now! Consider these ideas:

Ask your employees for their ideas, and make it easy for them to provide feedback. Surveys are a great way to do this!

Make providing feedback worth employees’ time. Consider gamifying the program or incentivizing employees for their contributions.

Be prepared for what you might hear. Not every piece of feedback is going to be sunshine and roses. But, listen anyway! You never know what you may learn.

Give credit where credit is due. When an employee makes a recommendation and any success follows, make sure that employee is congratulated. It seems small, but it’s so big!

Don’t assume managers are the best people to be responsible for escalating feedback and ideas. While many managers honestly have the businesses best interest in mind, some don’t. Employee feedback programs of any sort may be better off managed by a separate and unbiased third-party department.

Take action quickly: Employees will be more likely to continue sharing feedback and ideas if they see that their feedback and ideas are actually being taken seriously.

In 2012, RS Components embarked on an enterprise-wide transformation to improve its ability to compete on a global scale, serving over 1 million customers. As part of this program, the company selected Confirmit to provide a platform to gain deeper insights into the customer’s view of their experiences, and to underpin the firm’s strategy to deliver a differentiated and orchestrated customer experience across all customer interaction journeys and channels, both offline and online.

In this case study, by leading industry analyst Ovum, you’ll learn how the RS Components team set about building a customer experience program that now capture customer feedback in a consistent way across multiple channels and 29 countries, in 17 languages.

Highlights from the report include:

The role of senior support in the success of a Voice of the Customer program

How customer journey mapping proved key to improving processes

The importance of the Voice of the Employee in capturing insights from the front line.

Mobile is not an optional survey channel. It is a full-blown catalyst for business transformation. If you want respondents to take your survey – make it mobile and forget about connectivity. It’s so 2010.

Smart Market Researchers are increasing response rates by combining online with offline mobile app research using a single survey. Technology is at the center of this “seamless” or single survey experience as it provides a consistent survey look and feel across channels as well as enabling the completion of the same survey online and offline with a single survey link or URL.

In this webinar, Miguel Ramos, Product Marketing Manager at Confirmit, explained the value of a single survey for online and offline research at both the strategic and tactical level.

I’m lucky enough to spend much of my time talking to Confirmit’s Customer Experience experts and our customers about some of the most important best practices and approaches to running a Voice of the Customer program. It means I know what businesses can achieve through these initiatives and the capabilities of the technologies that support them.

One of my favorite retailers recently sent me an email about their sale. I was quite excited so I had a mooch around the website and found a half price item I liked in the Petite section (I am short and items on sale in that section are like hens’ teeth). I ordered it and was pleased to see that I could have the item delivered to a store of their partner brand, thus saving on delivery. I arranged to have the item (very pleasing cropped trousers, if you were wondering) sent to a store near the office and that was that.

So far, so good.

Better still, the trousers turned up 2 days later, I had an email with a bar code included sent to me, and I was off to pick them up on the way home. I had to wait a little longer than I’d have liked at the store, but it was ok, and the member of staff then scanned my email, found the package and I pottered off to St Paul’s station.

And then we get to the annoying thing. It’s not massive, but it’s something that companies really need to get on top of. I received a survey. Fine. Like most people, I get a lot of surveys now, but this is a company I like, sending me a timely survey about an experience that just happened. I’m very happy to provide my feedback, particularly if I think they will use it. The Click and Collect option is new to them and I’m sure there are things they want to learn.

But the first question was “Which of our stores did you collect your purchase from?”

Oh.

Well, Mr Retailer, it was the same store that I asked you to deliver it to. A fact that must be in your system somewhere because it arrived as planned. It’s also the same store where an electronic scanner of some kind just bleeped my barcode to find the parcel. I’d warrant that information is also in your system.

So why are you asking me? The other questions were all fine. Valid things that you have no other way of finding out, but this just irritated me and spoiled what had otherwise been a very good customer experience.

Silos of data are a nightmare for most businesses, and retailers are no exception, but really, there are ways to resolve them. Failing to do so risks losing future customer feedback that could have a real impact on your business. Just don’t ask the dumb stuff and use the data you already have.

Oh, the trousers fitted perfectly, in case you needed closure on that.

Top-performing businesses pay close attention to how their customers feel about their experiences with a product, brand or business. Solutions including Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs can help deliver those crucial insights.

In this panel of experts on this Roundtable webinar, learn how listening to the Voice of the Customer can increase profits and productivity across your entire organization.

They discussed:

The rise of digital and mobile interactions and how they impact VoC programs

How organizations can capture digital feedback and maximize its impact without alienating customers

Wouldn’t it be lovely if your business had a crystal ball that would tell you what the future holds and how to improve it? With that information, you could plan the most effective steps to drive revenue or beat out the competition.

Unfortunately, there are no crystal balls in business. But that doesn’t mean businesses can’t make well-informed, proactive decisions based on more data-centric predictions. Analytics are a data-driven, statistically sound way for businesses to identify areas for improvement, predict the future, and identify the best actions to push your business forward.

In this webinar, Confirmit's Holly DeMuro, Product Marketing Director and Tim Barker, Director of Customer Experience Consulting teamed up to demystify CX Analytics at every level.

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining 50 CX professionals at our seminar “Next big thing in measurement and metrics: Harness the power of CX innovations”. We were very lucky to have this event hosted by our client, Be The Match, in their state of the art offices in Minneapolis. Joy King, Executive Director of Be The Match Foundation and Linda Abress, VP of Donor Services kicked off the event by explaining the Be The Match organization, which matches patients requiring a bone marrow transplant with donors. They also explained how easy it is to join the registry and specifically called out the need for men between the ages of 18 and 44 to join.

One of Be The Match’s biggest challenges is ensuring that those that join the registry follow through with the marrow donation if they receive the call. This is why the organization is keenly focused on the donor experience and is always trying to make improvements based on the feedback they receive through their VoC program.

In addition to hearing from Linda and Joy, we also were joined by a bone marrow donor and a recipient. Having them on stage helped bring the foundation’s mission to life. This is an important cause that Confirmit is proud to support and during the program, we presented Be The Match with a $5,000 donation to support their efforts.

Following the presentation by Be The Match, Maxie Schmidt, Principal Analyst from Forrester Research Inc. and author of the recent report, “The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management Platforms, Q2 2017”, jumped into her presentation called “How Metrics Drive Customer Obsession (Or not)." Maxie took us through a few examples such as Ally Bank, Ingredion and Pitney Bowes to illustrate how to evaluate your current CX metrics to ensure they are focused on the customer life cycle rather than solely on operational goals. She then walked us through the steps to create and maintain employee engagement in CX metrics to ensure the longevity and success of our programs.

She also encouraged the audience to rethink how they are measuring customer engagement. Have you had a look to see how many of your customers are giving feedback or how many are involved in product/service ideation or creation? If not, those two metrics could give you a new view into how engaged your customers truly are. Metrics like NPS® only measure the satisfaction of those that are responding to your surveys, but the non-respondents may provide more accurate insights into your performance.

We then shifted gears and invited four CX experts to have a panel discussion lead by Shelly Chandler, VP of Consulting at Confirmit. She was joined by Jared Anderson, of Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Rob Reul, at Isometric Solutions, Michael C. Smith from Be The Match, and Jaclyn von Oven, Director of Best Buy. The panel shared best practices and guidance regarding innovative approaches to metrics and measurement as well as data collection and analysis to support more advanced voice of the customer programs. One simple but important reminder that came out of the conversation was to look at NPS alongside key driver data to create a more holistic view of the customer experience.

To close out the event, we discussed how to effectively measure improvement or change in the key touchpoints that are identified during the customer journey mapping process. This conversation was lead by Shelly Chandler and Jim Tincher, Journey Mapper-In-Chief/UofM Instructor, but we had a lot of great participation from the audience, sharing their experiences and challenges as it relates to measurement and metrics.

Finally, Patrick Meighan, VP at Confirmit, recognized Jean-Noel Li of Canada Goose for their recent ACE Award win! Jean-Noel was presented with a certificate and the audience responded with an energetic round of applause. Congratulations again Jean-Noel and team!

And what would an event in Minneapolis be if we didn’t conclude with a trip to Fulton Brewery to enjoy some of their local beer and delicious food catered by a neighborhood hot spot? This was a great day of networking and knowledge sharing and I encourage you to look for other events we’re hosting around the world so you don’t miss out on this great opportunity. Thank you again to Be The Match for hosting and please consider joining the donor registry.

AIG is a leading international insurance organization serving customers in more than 100 countries and jurisdictions. AIG companies serve commercial, institutional, and individual customers through one of the most extensive worldwide property-casualty networks of any insurer.

As part of their goal to institutionalize a focus on the end customer, AIG wanted to build a Voice of the Customer program that would identify service improvement opportunities and provide customer intelligence to support key projects.

In this case study, you'll learn how AIG were able to:

Drive a reduction in costs and an ability to allocate funds based on customer feedback

Improve business processes to drive customer satisfaction and retention

It’s always good to hear about the other stories from other companies out there in the world of customer engagement and customer experience. It’s a great reminder of the hard work and enthusiasm there is out there. At the same time, the range of ideas being employed shows a genuine diversity of experience and viewpoints at work in this space. Our companies are all different. Sure, we’re all unique. Just like our customers.

But there’s a danger that by focusing on the unique bits we forget about the bits where we’re all the same. Our Marketing teams actively insist that we focus on our Unique Selling Propositions - and that’s fine for cutting through in a crowded marketplace. But what about the bits that are the same wherever you go? What about the common ground?

I believe that getting this part right is what makes companies really thrive. There are exceptions that prove the rule, of course - like the jeweler who makes every piece by hand to a bespoke request from a single customer. But most of us aren’t in that sort of a market. There are more common elements across the products and services that we offer, than there are differences between them. One car or airline ticket or hotel room or bank account is, let’s be fair, pretty much like the next. The common purposes that matter to the customer most are all the same. The differences are around the edges far more so than at the core. Don’t you think?

Here’s my list of the things that stood out for me - the stuff I really liked. The ideas that made me think “what if we all did it this way? How different would the world be?”

1. The five hour working day. This idea has been out there for a while - but it’s perhaps no great shock that our lords and masters keep a little quiet on the subject! There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that workers become more focused and productive when time is shorter, so there is no productivity loss to the business from shortening the day (just to be clear, salaries remain the same as for 8 hours - you’re being paid for fulfilling a role, not for being present for x number of hours). If anything, those companies that have done this see a productivity gain.

2. Speaking of salary, I was reminded of the Californian finance company Gravity, where the remarkably intelligent (and brave!) CEO put in a minimum salary regardless of role. The aim was to take away money worries for his staff, so that when they were at work they gave it their all. None of their energy was wasted on worrying about bills back home - they could focus on just the job.

4. Jobs to be Done. Too often we focus on those pesky USPs, trying to design for cut-though. The danger is that we sometimes forget about purpose. How is the customer actually using the product? In fact, it’s more than that. What purpose is the customer using the product/service to fulfill? Is that at the heart of your innovation? It’s a change in perspective that goes beyond journey mapping, because by then you’re already off the path, potentially. This goes right back to the very start. “I’m trying to write a letter” is different to “I need a word processor”.

Purpose versus process. One needs to lead the other. Get it the wrong way around at your peril.

In customer feedback or research programs, most participants always have their mobile phone with them, so they can provide feedback at scale in a cost-effective way. This can happen even in situations when they would traditionally be considered “offline”, such as when there is no data connection due to poor signal strength or data roaming constraints.

Sometimes less is more. Short SMS surveys create an engaging and efficient channel to measure customer experiences. You can invite your customers, panellists or employees in a way that is simple and convenient for them, and get feedback with greater accuracy because you are engaging them immediately after the experience took place. For organisations running Market Research, Voice of the Customer or Employee Engagement programmes, SMS surveys can be a powerful complement to emailing survey reminders. They are also ideal for collecting feedback from customers who have only provided their mobile number as their point of contact.

The Confirmit / Infobip Combination

To support our customers’ need to send and receive international SMS messages, Confirmit has partnered with Infobip, a world leader in mobile messaging.

You can use personalised short URLs with the Infobip / Confirmit integration by using any of the following combinations:

One-way SMS survey: The participant receives an SMS message with a short URL link to an online mobile web survey

Two-way SMS survey: The participant receives an SMS message question and answers by replying directly with an SMS message

A combination of one-way and two-way SMS surveys: The participant has the option of clicking on the short URL link to complete the online mobile web survey, or to answer the survey by replying with an SMS message

You can enhance any MR, Voice of the Customer or Employee Engagement program by adding SMS survey invites and reminders. If you wish, the SMS invites can contain your brand name as the “sender” to provide a more personal feel. Branded SMS survey invitations can reach the participant’s phone right after the interaction has taken place at work, home or when they are shopping.

Recently, Confirmit and Women in Research (Wire) joined forces to help Market Researchers take advantage of innovations in data visualization, reporting, and storytelling to positively impact the bottom line at our New York City Market Research Lunch and Learn.

I was the event’s first speaker, discussing a topic about which we Product Marketing people are very passionate – storytelling. Whether you are preparing a PowerPoint, putting together a report, or a creating a dashboard, the best way to ensure your clients understand your research findings is to tell a compelling story with the data. In Market Research, this is often easier said than done, however! Storytelling is a mix of art and science and without the right tools and training, it can be an impossible feat.

In the presentation, I talked about the need to leverage multi-channel/multi-source data to tell a comprehensive and engaging story. We discussed how Market Researchers can create a compelling, data-driven story to organize and explain research findings while driving action in their client organizations. Most importantly we talked about the importance of sharing the data’s story in real time, using appropriate data visualizations.

Following my presentation, I was joined on stage by Jenny Karn, the co-founder of Beutler Ink, a company specializing in data visualization. Jenny and I enjoyed a fireside chat discussing best practices, benefits, and the challenges associated with data visualization in research. We also spent some time talking about trends, market changes, and the future of data visualization. As the presentation made clear, data visualization is an important tool for professionals in all fields. At least 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day. Concise charts and intuitive interfaces help us process that data deluge and convey important insights to key audiences.

Our final speaker for the day, the one who really drove the point home was Erica Pondillo, the Global Research Manager forRadius Global Market Research. Radius Global is a Confirmit customer and they’ve got data visualizations down to a science! In her presentation, Erica was able to show us how Radius uses visualizations to bring insights to life.

For those who weren’t able to attend, you really did miss an excellent event! But, you don’t have to miss out on the learnings we shared at the event. We have reference materials which you might find very helpful. Check them out at the links below or find out about upcoming events here.